


There But For the Grace of God

by thedevilchicken



Category: Napoleonic Era RPF
Genre: Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5081152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken





	There But For the Grace of God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlterEgon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/gifts).



Sometimes, Arthur wonders how the world would have been had he fought for the French. 

It’s easy to see how it might have happened, he thinks, with all the benefit of hindsight in his now advancing years. All that need have happened was quirk of fate, a fork in the road; had he remained in France once his education was complete, had he met a pretty girl there and married her, had he fallen under Boney’s spell instead or been caught up in Republican fervour, his life - if not, perhaps, the life of every man in England - could have differed in so very many regards. It could have differed near entirely, he thinks. And sometimes, as is the case tonight, as he lies awake in bed by candlelight, he wonders how that might have looked.

He supposes that moving forward in the French ranks might have proven a trifle more complicated without his family’s fortunes upon which to draw. He supposes, however, that his talents may have shone out nonetheless; perhaps he might have bought his commission on his own meagre funds and perhaps someday after that moved up to serve as _aide-de-camp_ to an aging _maréchal_ , made his social turns in Paris instead of back in Dublin. Perhaps he might have climbed higher on his merits and not made those next few steps still tugging on his brother’s purse-strings, though that was of course the custom of the day. Perhaps he might have lived through revolutions and kept his head somehow. Perhaps his allegiances could have been as capricious as the succession of French governments. Perhaps he might have learned to wear blue on the field in the place of red. Or perhaps again he might have turned spy; he’s understood the importance of strong intelligence more acutely than most, he’s sure.

Then he thinks of the battles lost and won down the years and considers how their outcomes, too, might have differed; he places himself on the French lines and plays out the battles in his mind, decisions taken, moves made. But would he even have fought at Talavera, at Salamanca, that last bloody night at Badajoz? Would he have gone instead to Russia and been Boney’s _Brave des braves_? Would there have been politics in his life, dukedoms or music, or the _Grande Armée_ alone? And what, in the end, of Waterloo? What of the war? What of England? Perhaps those ponderings take just a step too far.

Naturally, of course, Arthur Wellesley is not so vain as to believe it was his involvement alone that won the war and did for the emperor; he’s not Nelson, after all, and never had so puffed-up a notion of his own significance in the scheme. But he and his men and the battles they fought in the places that they fought them, he thinks perhaps one battle at a time they eased the winning of the war. A few _what if_ s turned reality and then the tide might have turned. He speaks French and enjoys it, yes, but the average fellow on the street wouldn’t know his _être_ from his elbow. And perhaps the French soldiers’ treatment of the English would have lacked the propriety Arthur had sought so keenly from his own men, were he not there to lead them. It could so easily have happened. Or, of course, he could have ended his days face to face with a firing squad, just like Marshal Ney.

“Cela aurait pu bien être moi,” he says. “There but for the grace of God.” And he blows out the candle and he closes his eyes, content. 

He’ll never decide to a satisfactory conclusion how the present would look had the past been changed, but he thinks he knows; today the world is as it should be.


End file.
